Step-by-step instructions on how to play Jenga board game. This block moving game is one of the most popular board games of all time and most certainly the top dexterity games of all time. If you are not familiar, dexterity games are games that use motion as a mechanic, like having to move your hands or something like that. Jenga is one of the most well-known games of all time and has spawned many innovations and cultural movements. This is our definitive guide to how to play Jenga.
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HOW TO PLAY JENGA – WHAT IS IT?
Balance Tower, Block a Block, Bugs Building, Dhilema, Jiggle Tower, Mini Timber Tumble, Red High Rise, Stack ’em, Stack The Carrots, Tension Tower, Tilt!, Timber, Timberrr: A Game of Balance, Tower, Tower Up, Towering! Blocks, Tumble, Tumble Tower, Tumble Block, Tumbling Tower and Wood Tower. These are all names for this decards old block game. None, however, are as popular as Jenga, a name as synonymous with an item as Kleenex.
Jenga is a dexterity game with no theme. It is all about a tower of wooden blocks and who can survive the longest. Starting with a standing tower of the aforementioned blocks, players take turns pulling bricks out from anywhere in the stack and placing them on top. As long as the tower does not fall over, gameplay continues. Each pull gets more and more difficult as the game goes on because it gets taller and weaker with each moved block.
HOW TO PLAY JENGA – STEP BY STEP
Time Needed: Approximately 20 minutes.
This is a step by step guide for how to play Jenga the popular pull it out and put it back dexterity board game. Additional notions and special rules can be found below the list. These will be referenced for your convenience.
1. SETUP | Create Tower
The only step of how to play Jenga setup is to create the initial tower. Each row has three blocks lined up next to each other with a new row placed on top of that with similar 3 in a row, but turned 90 degrees so the length runs perpendicular to the row above it. You go back and forth between these two configurations until you have stacked 8 rows hight (54 blocks @ 3 per row).
2. GAMEPLAY | Take Out A Block
The active player chooses any one block from the Jenga tower that is not in the top three rows. They then must remove that block from the tower without knowing everything down.
3. SETUP | Place Block
Once you have successfully pulled a block out of the tower, before your turn is over, you must now add it back. Put the block on top of the tower. You must complete a work in progress row before starting a new one.
4. GAMEPLAY | Rotate and Repeat
After three seconds have passed and the tower has not fallen, the active player has succeeded and it is now the next players turn. This handoff is important because now if the tower falls it is their fault and they lose. The next player repeats this step and it goes back and forth until the game ends.
5. LOSING | Knock Over Tower
If you knock over the Jenga tower in any way, for any reason, you lose the game.
6. WINNING | Survive
If you are able to survive and not be the person who knocks over the tower, you win. That is it. There is nothing to learning how to play Jenga.
HOW TO PLAY JENGA – KEY INFORMATION
SOLO VARRIANT
The game claims that there is a solo variant to playing Jenga. It mentions that the rules for this are just to play it normally, but with one person, and use this is an opportunity to practice. It has yet to win any best one player board game awards.
GAME CONTENTS
- 54x Wooden Blocks
- 1x Instruction Sheet
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HOW TO PLAY JENGA – IN CLOSING
We hope you can now say you know how to play Jenga. This is a very simple game to learn and an even simpler game to play. Jenga originally came out in 1983, it has been a board game icon for decades. In regards to dexterity games, there are none more know or beloved. This is an exciting game of surviving an inevitable avalanche of blocks longer your opponent and is something to be appreciated by players of all ages and intensity levels.
